Tainted Love

by Jeremy Reed

We meet and evaluate a decade
recalled impartially like blank airtime,
sampling scratched timeframes, like lunch on a lull
in the Haymarket — was the eighties that? —
a silver–rinsed sky, pointillistic shower,
the jungle smell of suddenly wet jeans

like soak stain canvas, cashmere eyeliner,
a positive DNA match with looks
as a Soho map of coordinates
we review now like a plane gone missing
into a violently black triangle,
and sent back later as a burnt object.

Our memories collide or separate
over enhanced juice–zesty lemon cake,
but all virtuosic retrievals lack
the nudity they were: the street’s the same,
it’s only time that’s altered its sell–by–date,
that’s now a sort of virtuality

themed for us by the pop smash ‘Tainted Love,’
that got into the air as radio,
quirky Northern soul collider with straight
that hung on infectiously as a sign
of generational change under the street
or running full on to escape the rain.